‘Please don’t get sentimental on me,’ he said with a shaky laugh. ‘Right now, it wouldn’t take much to reduce me to sobs! On the way round here, I was thinking of you and Dad. How you had your tiffs, but went on loving each other. But for Moira and me – well, it was as if we both just watched what we’d once had slowly disintegrate and knew there was nothing we could do about it. Even with the will to do so, we couldn’t put our marriage back together. There is literally nothing left.’

‘But something good came of it for both of you,’ said Marianne, ‘for me, too. Your son. Please tell him that his being discreet about his gran having a boyfriend needn’t include not dropping in here to be given some extra pocket-money for his trip to Europe.’

Marianne’s jocularity helped revive Martin’s spirits. ‘I’ll suggest that he phones you to fix a suitable time,’ he replied in similar vein. ‘The last thing he’d want would be to interrupt a tête-à-tête breakfast—’

Marianne tried not to blush but again found herself doing so.

‘I was joking, Mum!’

‘My love affair isn’t a joke to me.’

‘Then why not let the guy make an honest woman of you?’

‘If and when a proposal is put to me, the honest woman I am and have always been will have to deal with her own uncertainty on the subject.’

Marianne reverted to the one from which they had digressed. ‘Howard told me on the phone that A.P. and Jeremy will be spending some time with him and Karin, in Munich.’

‘They’ve also been offered hospitality by Karin’s parents when they get to Berlin. And Henry Moritz told Frank to let them know they’d be welcome to sleep on his living-room floor, in Paris.’

‘Given Henry’s couldn’t-care-less approach to all but political causes, they will probably have to sweep the floor first!’

‘You’ve never approved of Henry, have you?’

Marianne got up to make them each another mug of tea. ‘It isn’t for me to approve, or disapprove. Like you said to me about mine, his life is his own – and in Henry’s case that couldn’t be more true. For me, Henry epitomizes the proverbial rolling stone gathering no moss, and I find that rather sad. I don’t doubt that he’s accumulated some of the scars nobody can hope to escape, but for most of us living also provides the simple human pleasures Henry hasn’t known since he put the mundane behind him and set forth on his endless banner carrying.’

‘If by the mundane you mean his hometown,’ said Martin, ‘Henry’s in Manchester at the moment. A.P. called Leona to get his Paris phone number, and it was Henry who picked up the receiver.’